The Beginning PART 1

Hey there, folks. Welcome to my blog and thanks for stopping by! Ha! Anyways, a couple of things -- if you followed my notes on Facebook you may have read this stuff. This is the beginning of my novel that I am working on. I will post three consecutive installments and then random snippets. They will be titled as such so you know what you are getting into. Enjoy and if you wanna rip it apart - I am ready!




There is an old man that comes into my coffee shop every day. I don’t know exactly how old he is, because I have never asked. I don’t even know if he is technically an old man, and what exactly is old? At one point are we no longer young or middle aged but instead a senior? I digress…anyways; I have never asked him his age so I don’t really know how many years he has under his belt. I know he rarely smells pleasant and is missing his front teeth. Sometimes when he walks in I have to tell myself to breathe through my mouth and forget that my nose exists. I worry when he doesn’t come in, because his face carries a weight that both frightens and exhilarates me. His eyes are full of the storm - you know the kind - the damp, dull gray that suffocates the sky. He has the kind of eyes that warn the unknowing majority away. They whisper out to me - they say that he has been to his personal end and he almost, only almost, gave it all away. He almost said “fuck this show - I am going to the rock and roll circus in the sky.” Then he turned around and realized that the minute he makes up his mind, does the deed, says his goodbye - the very moment that his heart stops…

That is the moment that life is going to look up. That is the moment that he will take a glance around and smile and his eyes will lose some of their overcast and a strange light will fill whatever he has inside and for the first time in a long time he will feel warm.

That is the secret that his eyes tell when he looks at me. I smile and say “hey Dan, how are you doing today?” and in his transient way he responds that he just doesn’t know yet because he hasn’t had his coffee. So he hands me his cardboard cup - the one he keeps and uses time and time again until the bottom is stained brown and nearly falling out around itself, and I fill it almost to the top. I leave room for cream. He follows me to the coffee station and after I hand him the cup he asks how I am, and he almost always asks me if today I believe in love. When I tell him I am fabulous, which I almost always do, he asks if he can have some. So I shimmy a little, and I shake, and then I throw my hands toward him and sprinkle him with a little bit of fabulous. This almost always makes him laugh.

When he laughs I can see what used to be a good looking man, before the heartache and the desolation crept into his soul and made its way to his face. Years before the lines made etch a sketch patterns around his mouth and the cold NY winters took residence in his heart. I envision Dan as young man, his hair not greasy, long or gray. His gold plated, square framed glasses as one whole piece instead of held together with tape. His hands (those are the best part about him) are not crusted over with dry skin and calluses, and his fingernails are trim and clean - not outlined with the grime I see when he hands his cardboard cup to me.

But now I see this scrap metal man digging in garbage cans and talking into a remote control like it is the newest and coolest cell phone.

He always sits down at the same table - it is by the window and far away from the counter where I take routine six hour residence. The table has four chairs - each of them have a circular seat and black wrought iron backings. He always takes the one furthest away and closest to the window. Sometimes he talks on his remote control, sometimes he writes frantically in a small crossword puzzle book, but most of the time he just keeps his eyes wide open and observes the outside. I rarely ever catch him watching me, but when our eyes meet he stands up and comes over and talks to me while I stock cookies or cut brownies.

“So Bella, do you believe in love today?” He will ask.

“Now Dan,” I flirt. “Why do you ask? Are you hoping to take me out to dinner or win me over with your modern romance?”

“Well,” he smiles and says as he wipes a bit of the grease from underneath the brim of his stained, once was tan cap “I did use tah be quite ah charmer in mah day.”

Then I laugh and he continues with his daily dose of philosophical jargon.

“I only askh,” he begins, “because I know, and I will tell you what I know bechause I know it and have leahned it well - that liffe is short. That is ahl. Time is not as long as anyone thinks. We walk around with our head in the clouds - like do dah do - I know because I like to dream, too. We walk around with our head in the clouds and ahl of the time, every minute, the day is getting away. It never comes back to us. We never get ahnother chance at the minute we just lost. We never know if that was our last minute. We just know one thing, Bella. Do you know what we know?”

I smile my warmest smile because, despite Dan’s wretched after smell of onions, body odor and the occasional dip down ganjah’s green path, he really is a swell guy. I smile with everything I have because I know he is dismissed as a bum or a ramshackle man, but sure as the night is dark he throws a dollar in my tip jar twice a day while the conservatives who wear fancy suits and turn their nose in the air at my dependable Dan might throw their $.21 of change in that jar, and that is only if I was a very good girl indeed.

I smile because Dan makes me believe that even after the dark there is still light. Dan makes me realize that even in pain there is love. You see, Dan loves us - us coffee shop kids. He adores us, and that is why, two to four times a day, he comes in to see us and throw a little money in our jar and spread his pearls of wisdom across the counter in the hope that it might, one day, guide us.

“What do we know, Dan?”

“That rock and roll is dead. Barbara Streisand killed it.”